Menstruation is an experience common to the majority of women who are not using hormonal contraceptives to suppress or control bleeding during their non-pregnant reproductive years.1 Even so, it is something which is shrouded in etiquette and circumlocution in terms of how it can be referred to and how the menstruating body should be managed. Conducting a study into sensitive subjects such as this can be challenging. This first chapter will discuss the approaches I developed in order to access vernacular knowledge and belief about menstruation, a physical process which is so very commonplace and ordinary for women, and yet so sensitive that it is difficult to talk openly about it.
My research addressed ways in which lay knowledge and everyday experience influence the social and cultural constructions of menstruation. As a trained folklorist working within a department of Sociological Studies, my research was interdisciplinary and drew its inspiration from social anthropology, cultural studies, and folklore studies. My approach to the research reflected this and gave my project two primary objectives. The first was to document the greatest possible range of everyday vernacular knowledge and discourse about menstruation in the north Derbyshire area of England where I carried out my fieldwork. The second was to interpret this corpus of data in light of relevant anthropological and sociological concepts and theories. I thus not only document and categorize what is known and discussed in the survival or innovation of menstrual beliefs and practices, but also offer an interpretation of this data, and indicate how âknowledgeâ can influence attitudes, behaviour, and experience, as well as how different discourses intermingle and influence the position and behaviour of menstruating women in contemporary society.
Why Study Vernacular Knowledge About Menstruation?
Much of what we âknowâ about the world we live in is learnt through informal interaction with parents, friends and family. Understanding how people talk, in their own words and in their own way, about the world they inhabit and their position in it can offer insights into matters of health and the body. Sexual health researchers have, to some extent, recognized that lay knowledge, misperceptions, and folklore can, for example, influence contraceptive choice (Kuiper et al. 1997; Clark et al. 2006; Asker et al. 2006; Glasier et al. 2008). Folklorists in turn recognize the impact that the study of folklore can have on health research and education (Whatley and Henken 2000). Relationships towards the human body differ from person to person, and this can impact on the choices that people make. Bransen (1992) demonstrated that concepts of embodiment varied from woman to woman, regarding their experience of the menstrual cycle, while different attitudes towards the body and bleeding patterns can be influential in contraceptive choice (Newton and Hoggart 2015; Cheung and Free 2005). Relationships to the body and the meanings of bodily processes are not therefore always interpreted in the same way. Meanings vary between different groups; for example, Clarke et al. (2006) showed that side effects of hormonal contraception (HC) could be understood differently by practitioners and patients:
Experience is also interpreted differently depending upon culture. Body experience is not conceptualized in the same way by everyone and one groupâs sense might be different from anotherâs. This is also the case for how menstruation is viewed and dealt with culturally (Buckley and Gottlieb 1988). As I shall later discuss, although there are commonalities of experience, we cannot take it for granted that one groupâs, societyâs, or cultureâs experiences of menstruation are the same. If we are to make sense of the experience of menstruation, each must be studied in context in order to identify the cultural framing of menstruation, how it is perceived, what symbolism is attributed to menstrual blood, how it is culturally defined, what the gender roles are, and so forth. In order to make sense of this, it is necessary to examine the groupsâ shared cultural knowledge.These âside effectsâ presumably are the same ones that health care providers might enumerate and about which they might counsel young women, but whether the âside effectsâ to which the young women refer are actually the same as providersâ understanding of HC side effects is not known. The question has not been studied. (Clark et al. 2006, p. 214)
There are many different social forces that help shape body experience. Meaning is produced in, and by, different contexts, and it can help us to formulate understandings of how gender is produced, and to understand menstruation in terms of gendered body experience. Although social constructivist arguments account for the âconstructionâ of the body through discourse, it is important to remember that the body is not produced solely by discourse, and it is therefore necessary to find a way to unite the social and cultural aspects with the physical body. One way to do this would be to investigate how people make sense of it in their own words, taking into account their own experiences and belief systems. In answer to this, my project focused on researching menstruation and the vernacular knowledge and language surrounding this common bodily process. I hope to demonstrate, therefore, in this first chapter the value offered by interdisciplinary research that draws on folklore studies for its methodological inspiration.
The Folklore of Folklore: Problems of Definition
The commonplace understanding of âfolkloreâ is not the same as the academic definition. The day-to-day use of the word has evolved to represent something quite different from its academic meaning, where âfolk-loreâ as a term and a subject for study was first coined in 1846 by William Thoms who, under the pseudonym of Ambrose Merton, wrote a letter to the Athenaeum (28 August 1846) suggesting this as an alternative to âpopular antiquitiesâ, the phrase then in use for studies in the antiquarian tradition of survivals of ancient beliefs and practices (Thoms, 1846). As âfolkloreâ developed as a discipline, and since the 1960s, discussion has arisen amongst academics as to what was, and what was not folklore, and what the study of folklore entailed, as well as what the value was of such research. As the American folklorist Alan Dundes wrote:
Indeed, over the last 150 years, the study of folklore has shifted away from the documentation of antiquities and curiosities, towards the presence of folklore in the everyday and the belief that we are all âfolkâ. This is especially obvious in the study of urban or contemporary legends and the role of the media in the dissemination of folklore (Clarke, 2015, Jenkins, 2014, Bennett, 2005).2There is a vague sense that folklorists wander out into the field with their tape recorders and their note books, jotting down quaint turns of phrase or documenting some archaic village festival. But not many academics are aware that folkloristics is a separate and distinct discipline, straddling the humanities and the social sciences, with its own set of periodicals, bibliographies, methods, and theories. (Dundes, 1989, p. vii)
However, the academic discipline of folklore has suffered from problems of definition since its inception, which has led to it being somewhat overlooked as a viable discipline, at least in the UK. There is no longer a department for the study of folklore in any English university,3 and, perhaps dogged by its âeverydayâ interpretation as something âquaintâ, the study of folklore fell afoul of the trivialization of the wordâs application. âFolkloreâ in its day-to-day sense not only denotes a type of performance, knowledge, or craft associated with âtraditionâ or âcultureâ, but also has come to represent the very opposite of âfactâ and of scientific understanding. As the British folklorist John Widdowson writes:
During the time I was conducting my research, I became increasingly aware that the original title of my project âThe Folklore of Menstruationâ was problematic. It hindered access to data because of the popular allusions it carried. The fault was entirely my own, since I had assumed that the title of my project would have little impact on the collection of my data. The title of the study was, however, something which drew the attention of my informants. They were eager to discuss it and there was a general assumption amongst informants that âfolkloreâ does not persist into our present-day society:The compound word folklore suffers not only by being juxtaposed with fact, but also because it is used to signify what is untrue, old-fashioned, inconsequential, and irrelevant, especially among educated people in England. (Widdowson, 2010, p.127)
Some asserted that folklore about menstruation was a thing from the past, or else something that âother culturesâ had:Yeah, I suppose that when you think of folklore, perhaps itâs just what you think⊠something, what? medieval?âŠsomething quite historic. (F8C)
This perception of âothersâ as representing folkloric survivals is consistent with the assumption that folklore is something that is on the decline in British society. As one informant noted, our understanding, especially of things concerning the body, is informed by science and medicine, and these discourses take the place of âfolkloreâ:I donât really know where, or, ⊠but I know that, like, in some places ⊠arenât women sent away from the village, or whatever, because they are seen as unclean? (F12B)
Another woman (18â30) noted on her questionnaire:I donât think there are, in our society, quite the taboos they hadâI think theyâve been disproved, and I think thatâs because of the freedoms we have today, and the knowledgeâthe medical knowledgeâI think thatâs dispelled. (F3D)
Thus, the project title at first hindered access to data because of the popular understandings of âfolkloreâ that it called up. I had naively assumed that the title of my project would attract interest, which it did, but I also underestimated the impact it would have on the collection of data. I found that accessing the types of knowledge I wanted was not straightforward. There were general problems about the recruitment of participants, but, more specifically, also with respect to my chief concern, which was to gather data derived from living vernacular discourses.4 These discourses are not something an informant would necessarily bring immediately to mind when told about the research topic, and they proved to be difficult to collect. As Whatley and Henken state:I donât feel I was able to provide longer answers to the last few questions because I have a thorough understanding of the facts on periods and have not been exposed to superstition, folklore, etc.
Thus, I faced challenges in communicating the kind of knowledge I wanted to access, i.e. the âeverydayâ and the informal. As I shall discuss shortly, I overcame this difficulty by employing a mixed-methods approach to data collection. However, although I found that the term âfolkloreâ was not very useful when addressing my informants, since it led to misunderstandings about the sort of knowledge I wished to document, contemporary folklore about menstruation does exist in British society. Ultimately the term âfolkloreâ became too problematic, so I decided that perhaps a better way of referring to what I was interested in would be âvernacular knowledgeâ.5 I redefined my study more broadly as âmenstruation: contemporary popular knowledge and beliefâ, which encompasses both âvernacular knowledgeâ and âinformal discourseâ.So ever-present in the background of peopleâs lives that it becomes almost invisible, folklore nonetheless shapes peopleâs behaviour and reactions to events. A large part of what many of us know about our bodies, in both health and disease, we have learned informally, from kids on the playground or colleagues at work, from piecing together the information contained in folk beliefs, jokes, legends and personal experience narratives. (Whatley and Henken, 2000, p. 8)
Menstruation and My Research Path
Menstruation is an individual, subjective experience and studying it led me in that direction, too. This project proved to be a personal journey, of which at the beginning I was unaware. Firstly, I had to face up to and overcome my own reservations about the topic, and secondly, I needed to learn to be resilient when challenged over my research and the reasons for it.
From the outset, whenever I mentioned my project to people, their reactions were polarized and either very enthusiastic or hypercritical. Typical of the first would be, âOh thatâs interesting; I didnât know that folklore about menstruation existed, but now you mention it, I suppose it doesâ. This was a fairly positive reaction, where the individual was interested in my topic and took time to think about it. The second and perhaps more popular reaction would typically be, âWhy are you studying that? What use it is?â At first I had been unprepared for this, and these questions were not easy to answer, with the two topics âfolkloreâ and âmenstruationâ being problematic in themselves. âFolkloreâ still tends to be generally interpreted as âOld Wivesâ Talesâ, indicating ideas, superstitions and beliefs in decline, while âmenstruationâ is something not often spoken about in everyday âpoliteâ discourse. On reflection I think I often apologized for my topic. I felt very much discomfited when a âwhyâ response was accompanied by a smirk, a laugh or sarcastic overtone. Sometimes it was hurtful; one woman (over 60) on her questionnaire response wrote only: âWhy not do a real PhD? Do you want to be known as âthe rag doctorâ?â indicating that even an association with the topic was distasteful. In her response many perceptions collided: the notion of âfolkloreâ as somehow unacademic; of menstruation as stigmatizing and distasteful; and the weighting of different disciplines against one another. When questioned as forcefully as this, I regret that my initial response was defensive: âItâs not because I have an unhealthy obsession with menstruation.â At the outset I was not resilient enough to stand up to criticism. Later I would try and work through the questions, and verbalize and justify my reasons more, explaining the lack of academic work on the subject, but I still found this unsatisfactory.6 I had to ask myselfâwhy did I want to study it?
My motivation for studying the topic has probably come from my own experiences of menstruation. For me, it was a big challenge during my teenage years and into adulthood, and the more I spoke about it and studied it, the more interested I became in the injustice I felt: firstly, as a woman whose own lived experience of menstruation has been problematic, and secondly, because of the ways I learnt about menstruation, when the information in the âpoliteâ public sphere was ...